Resources
Resources are the raw materials every empire draws from the land it controls — collected daily from settlement territory, and either used directly or transformed into equipment by workshops. See Production and Equipment for how raw resources become armour and weapons, and Global Equipment Stock for how everything is stored and shared across the empire once produced.
There are seven resources in total: Manpower, Horses, Iron, Leather, Wood, Stone, and Grain.
Manpower
Manpower is simply citizens, counted: one manpower equals one available recruit. Not every citizen is available for service, though — the empire's recruit level (Volunteering, Conscription, or Impressment) decides what fraction of each population group actually enters the manpower pool each month. See Population Growth for the full recruit fraction table and how foreign populations recruit at a reduced rate.
Horses
Horses are needed both for recruiting cavalry and for manufacturing support equipment back in the settlements that bred them. Surplus horses, once a city's own needs are met, flow into the Global Equipment Stock — available for cavalry recruitment anywhere in the empire, or saved for future support equipment production elsewhere.
Iron
Iron is mined from the earth and forms the backbone of every weapon and most armour an empire fields — the primary ingredient in melee weapons, and a significant component of both armour and support equipment. An empire that settles only iron-poor terrain will find its armies chronically under-equipped no matter how many workshops it builds.
Leather
Leather comes primarily from forest and broken ground hexes, and is the single largest ingredient in armour production, with a meaningful role in support equipment too. Camps built on forest or broken ground significantly boost a hex's leather output — essential for any empire planning to field heavily armoured troops at scale.
Wood
Wood serves workshops both as fuel and as raw structural material, and is the largest single ingredient in ranged weapon production, with a solid role in support equipment besides. Forest hexes are by far the richest source, making woodland territory genuinely valuable to any empire with serious production ambitions.
Stone
Stone is deliberately the most limiting resource in the game — consumed entirely as an upfront cost the moment any construction project begins, whether raised by an army or a settlement, and produced only by certain terrain:
| Terrain | Base Stone/Day | With Quarry (×3) |
|---|---|---|
| Hills | 4 | 12 |
| Broken Ground | 3 | 9 |
| Forest / Dark Forest / Desert / Mesa | 1 | — |
| Plains / Lakes / Oasis / Coast / Swamp / Bog | 0 | — |
A capital settlement also generates a flat +2 stone/day regardless of its own terrain — a small built-in allowance so that even a plains-locked empire isn't entirely without construction capacity. Rivers and terrain improvements each add a further +1 stone/day on Hills and Broken Ground specifically — small bonuses, deliberately, since stone is meant to stay scarce.
Worked example: a starting empire on pure plains earns just its capital's +2/day — 60 stone a month, barely enough to afford a Farm and a terrain improvement before having to save up again. The same empire holding two Hills and one Broken Ground hex instead earns +13/day — 390 a month, six times as much, simply from where it chose to settle. Once a Quarry is built on a Hills hex, that single tile alone produces as much stone as the entire plains empire managed across its whole territory. Geographic control of rocky terrain isn't a minor advantage here — it's close to the entire game.
See Production and Equipment for how Stone's project-by-project costs work once you're ready to actually spend it.
Grain
Grain is generated daily from settlement territory and consumed continuously, every month, by every settlement and every army — whether that army is marching, resting, or doing nothing at all. Running short doesn't just risk starvation in a settlement; it directly reduces an army's Grain Supply Percentage, which can cut its Combat Readiness by up to 20%. See Armies for the full Grain Supply effect on Combat Readiness, and Population Growth for how grain shortfalls also suppress birth rates and raise death rates.
Base Resource Output by Terrain
Every hex produces resources daily, purely based on its terrain type:
| Terrain | Horses | Iron | Leather | Wood | Stone | Grain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plains | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Forest | 1 | 2 | 2 | 12 | 1 | 1 |
| Dark Forest | 0 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 1 | 0 |
| Broken Ground | 2 | 8 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Hills | 1 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Bog | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Swamp | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Desert | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Oasis | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Mesas | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Island | 1 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| Lakes | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 3 |
| Coast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Ocean / Mountains | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
A few terrain types tell their own story here: Hills are the clear home of Iron, Broken Ground close behind. Forest and Dark Forest both produce a striking 12 Wood — by far the richest wood terrain in the game, despite Dark Forest offering almost nothing else. Plains remain the best all-round Grain terrain among common land types, which is exactly why they're prized for agriculture despite producing no Stone at all.
Editor DLC: Winter Terrain
DLC required: This feature requires the Eternal Creation expansion.
| Terrain | Horses | Iron | Leather | Wood | Stone | Grain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold Plains | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| Tundra | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Snow Forest | 0 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 0 |
| Snow Hills | 0 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| Snow Mountains / Ice Ocean | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Winter terrain consistently underperforms its temperate counterpart — Snow Hills produces two-thirds the Iron of ordinary Hills, and Snow Forest barely two-thirds the Wood of ordinary Forest. Tundra is the one exception worth noting: as a wholly new terrain type with no temperate equivalent, it offers a genuinely solid Iron and Leather yield despite its harsh description. See Terrain for movement cost, defensive bonus, and equipment wear for all six winter terrain types.
Terrain Bonuses
Beyond a hex's base output, certain conditions boost resource generation further.
Coastal bonus: any land hex bordering the Coast or Ocean — not the water hex itself, which produces no resources of its own — receives a flat bonus to its output, representing fishing and access to maritime trade:
| Condition | Horses | Iron | Leather | Wood | Stone | Grain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adjacent to Coast/Ocean | +2 | — | +1 | — | — | +2 |
River and Improvement bonuses apply directly to the hex itself:
| Condition | Horses | Iron | Leather | Wood | Stone | Grain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| River | +2 | +1 | +1 | +2 | +1* | +2** |
| Improvement | +2 | +2 | +2 | +2 | +1* | +2** |
*Stone's river and improvement bonuses only apply on Broken Ground and Hills.
**Grain's river and improvement bonuses only apply on Plains, Lakes, Oasis, Coast, and Island — terrain that already produces grain in meaningful quantity. Improving a Forest, Hills, or Broken Ground hex still grants its normal Wood, Iron, or Stone bonus, but no longer grants a Grain bonus.
Capital bonus: a settlement's capital hex generates two further flat bonuses regardless of its own terrain — +2 Stone/day, and Province Development Level × 6 Grain/day. The Grain bonus scales directly with how developed the capital has become, offsetting the much larger population a capital supports compared to an ordinary settlement — see Population Growth for capital starting population and cap figures. No other resource receives a capital bonus of any kind.
Outpost bonuses — only one ever applies per hex, never stacked together:
| Outpost | Effect |
|---|---|
| Mine | Iron ×2 |
| Camp | Leather ×3 |
| Quarry | Stone ×3 |
| Stable | Horses +15 (flat, not a multiplier) |
| Church | All resources ×2, but only while a specific empire-wide ability is active |
Skulk settlements on Dark Forest hexes specifically receive a flat +2 to Iron, Leather, Wood, and Grain — reflecting their natural affinity for that terrain (see Loyalty for the same affinity expressed through their loyalty modifiers).
